Chester Sam­bra­no

A spe­cial court is in the process of be­ing set up to deal specif­i­cal­ly with mat­ters of hu­man traf­fick­ing and sex­u­al of­fences.

This was re­vealed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds on the Eye on De­pen­den­cy pro­gramme trans­mit­ted on I.95.5 FM on Sun­day.

Hinds point­ed out the fact that Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie is­sued a ‘Prac­tice Di­rec­tion’ via the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette on Jan­u­ary 23, 2023.

This move by Archie was aimed at es­tab­lish­ing and des­ig­nat­ing Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons (TIP) and Sex­u­al Of­fence mat­ters as ap­pro­pri­ate for spe­cial pro­ce­dures of the court.

He said the in­ten­tion of that was to im­me­di­ate­ly es­tab­lish a spe­cial crim­i­nal court with­in the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion of the High Court.

Hinds said from con­sul­ta­tions with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, who speaks to the Ju­di­cia­ry, “The Ju­di­cia­ry has even gone as far as to iden­ti­fy cer­tain judges and cer­tain mag­is­trates who will deal es­pe­cial­ly with these cas­es to fast track them.”

How­ev­er, a time­frame was not giv­en.

He said this in­for­ma­tion has been made avail­able to the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment in re­sponse to its Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port 2022.

In the re­port, this coun­try re­mained on the Tier 2 Watch List.

“We are, ac­cord­ing to them, in some fail­ure to pro­vide ev­i­dence of in­creas­ing ef­forts to com­bat se­vere forms of traf­fick­ing in per­sons, in­clud­ing in­creas­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions...pros­e­cu­tion and con­vic­tions,” Hinds said.

But the min­is­ter went on to ex­plain that strides have been made to ar­rest the is­sue.

He said at this time eight hu­man traf­fick­ing mat­ters were com­mit­ted to stand tri­al where the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry would have been done at the Mag­is­trates’ Court and the mag­is­trate found that a pri­ma fa­cie case was made out and there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to send it to the High Court.

The min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that “be­tween 2013 and 2022, 40 files were sub­mit­ted to the DPP by the po­lice for the DPP’s con­sid­er­a­tion as to what will hap­pen with these.”

He added that there are 54 pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries at the Mag­is­trates’ Court lev­el on­go­ing as well.

In ad­di­tion, sev­en mat­ters at the sum­ma­ry court pro­ceed­ing stage.

“As Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty faced with this an­nu­al re­port from the Unit­ed States and recog­nis­ing that we want to move from Tier two Watch List to Tier One, mean­ing full com­pli­ance, we would have read, in fact, we would have stud­ied this re­port, line for line, word for word and work­ing with all the of­fi­cials led by the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU), we re­spond­ed in the 2021 re­port to the US State De­part­ment on every line of their re­port.

The min­is­ter said he had be­gun hav­ing fre­quent dis­cus­sions with the DPP (Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions), “who I can say has been very forth­com­ing and sup­port­ive in terms of get­ting the is­sues go­ing, giv­ing the ad­vice to the po­lice he in­di­cat­ed to me that he has a num­ber of mat­ters, a hand­ful of mat­ters, I think about eight of them and that is at as that last con­ver­sa­tion with him on that mat­ter, that are for in­dict­ment, in oth­er words, they would be sent to the High Court for the High Court’s at­ten­tion at that lev­el.”had

“I have been get­ting that strong sup­port,” he added.

The min­is­ter has al­so been in con­tact with the Chief Jus­tice through the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs.

“We have had the full sup­port and co­op­er­a­tion of the Chief Jus­tice of this Re­pub­lic in this re­gard,” he said.

One of the dis­cus­sions em­a­nat­ing from the US re­port point­ed to gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials pos­si­bly be­ing in­volved in hu­man traf­fick­ing and a call for them to be pros­e­cut­ed.

This re­sult­ed in fin­gers be­ing point­ed from both the PNM (Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment) and UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress) sides at each oth­er’s mem­bers be­ing al­leged per­pe­tra­tors.

US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond lat­er clar­i­fied that gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial means any­one with ac­cess to pub­lic funds, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has since launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the claims made in the re­port.

Hinds said any­one found to be in­volved in such crimes should be held ac­count­able ac­cord­ing to the law.

As it re­lates to po­lice of­fi­cers, the min­is­ter re­vealed that for the US re­port­ing pe­ri­od April 2022 to March 2023 two in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to law en­force­ment of­fi­cers have been launched and the DPP is ac­tive­ly in­volved in pri­ori­tis­ing and work­ing close­ly with the po­lice to get these and oth­er mat­ters rolling.

“So that it can­not be said the gov­ern­ment is cov­er­ing up any ac­tions,” he said.

He re­it­er­at­ed that the US has been help­ing this coun­try and a spe­cial­ist in TIP’s will be ar­riv­ing here by the end of the month to work along­side lo­cal law en­force­ment.

He added that a na­tion­al ac­tion plan on hu­man traf­fick­ing has been com­plet­ed and was ap­proved by Cab­i­net in April 2022.

Hinds said the US has al­so been in­formed of this de­vel­op­ment.